


in the darkness I will meet my creators

by davidelizabeth



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21819808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davidelizabeth/pseuds/davidelizabeth
Summary: Maybe the well had been a gift from her, pity on the boy who could not face his own aggressors and jailors. An end to the suffering he had lived through, through the mask that had been sewn onto his face so perfectly and meticulously that he could no longer remember where the mask started, and his real face began. The cold crept closer and closer, intertwining with the snake that lived in his bones, and the spiders that made his pores their homes.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 41
Collections: FE3H Holiday Gift Exchange





	in the darkness I will meet my creators

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jiminggoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jiminggoon/gifts).



> merry christmas!!

Life has never been fair to Sylvain, from the moment he was born. In hindsight, it had always seemed to him like whatever deity that did exist, took it upon themselves to meddle and send his life into a downward spiral he could never escape from. Caught in a sort of death spiral that would hopefully kill both himself and whoever was trying to drag him down to hell. It was always in the back of his mind, from the moment he was old enough to understand the concept of death, and the crippling weight that being a crested heir put atop his shoulders.

  
From the moment he could walk, there was a lance thrust into his hand. He was drilled and taught till his hands were blistered and bloody, and he could hold not even a spoon nor pen. When his hands were too bloodied and slick to hold the lance, he would be locked in the room with his tutors, forced to learn whatever they deemed necessary and important to his education. Everything else was secondary to crafting the perfect heir with the perfect image, one that would never stray from the path they wished for him, nor the image that they had crafted him. Marriages were constantly discussed, some taken off the table very quickly, for their lack of advantages, others considered carefully and stored for further discussion. His body never seemed to be his own, being pulled and pushed in different directions depending on who he needed to impress, and where he needed to be.

  
From the moment he had met Felix, he wondered if the other was being forced through what he had a child, almost torrential training with no way to stop or take a break once it became too much. Maybe this small kid in front of him was trying to cope the best he could, by trying to outshine the expectations thrust upon him. He so badly wanted to comfort Felix, but with his father and brother watching, could do no more than formally introduce himself, and swear to himself that if he learned anything from the boy about his treatment, he would run his father through consequences be absolutely damned.

  
Miklan had always been around every corner, a demon wearing what used to be human skin, as he goaded and tore into the skin that separated Sylvain’s heart from the open air. Nowhere was ever safe from the terror his brother posed, he was always just around the corner or hiding in the servant’s passageways to corner and tear into him. Quiet death threats whispered through meetings with anyone he could get away with, to slamming him into walls, to pushing him downstairs and out windows when he could.

  
Anytime his father caught him breaking under Miklan’s relentless torment and endless drive to force Sylvain into insanity, he was punished. Dragged off to a dark room deep in the bowels of the estate, a room only stepped into by three people, and only walked out of by two. His father had never bothered with his brother, simply using him as a pawn in his sick and twisted game of chess to further his political agenda and legacy. If he wasn’t strong enough or fortified enough to ignore his brother, he was simply not good enough and had to be improved.

  
Lashes, cuts, and pain from every implement his father could get his hands on were commonplace, along with the verbal torture that spewed out of his father’s hateful and rotten mouth. Every hurt inflicted on his body was met with the strict and senseless rule that every sound made was more time and more pain. Sessions lasting for hours and hours that eventually led into days, as his father forced him from consciousness through pain alone. His father would only stop when the bone was visible, or if the pallor of his skin was too close to death. It barely ever scarred, almost all of the evidence left by his father dispatched with a simple swipe of a mages hand. Only the worst of the lashes showing through, as his father's mage had never failed in knitting his skin, bones, and muscles back together in the perfect mockery of a canvas.

  
Faith magic had always worked on his fathers’ side, making it his undeniable enemy. It had taken his evidence from him and left him with a snake in his bones. It crawled around his body, slithering around his bones like a snake, sliding up and down his spine till he sobbed from the sensation alone. The snake never seemed to leave either, after that first unfortunate healing session deep in the night. It circled and circles his bones, keeping him up almost every night as he cried and sobbed, scratching at his skin to try and get rid of it.

  
The snake never left, it was like a parasite that faith magic had left buried under his skin. It was always on his mind if it was normal, or a side effect of the intent of the healing. He was never allowed near the barracks to ask, and when he was in the company of warriors or mercenaries alike, he was never alone enough to risk asking the damning question.

  
His skin crawled with a different type of parasite as well, the remnants of a touch he had so desperately fought repeatedly to get away from. Never had a kind touch ever been directed at him, they always had dangerous intent, killer intent, or sexual intent. His first time had been much too young but had gained his father a valuable ally that he simply couldn’t see the value in turning down. He had sobbed and gagged the entire time, but the man had been pleased enough to fulfil his end of the deal to his father. For the first time in his life, his skin did not only crawl with the snake hidden in his bones, but also the spiders that scurried from the man’s hand onto his skin.

  
After this, he wondered if Dimitri was forced into the same situations to fulfil his fathers’ contracts and satiate his father’s business partners. Distantly, and without his express permission, he wondered if this behaviour was even normal at all, or if his situation was simply the outlier. He quickly dismissed the thought, because it threatened to drive a stake through his heart he was not sure he would be able to recover from.

  
Suffering had been branded into his bones by the neglect and direct treatment of his body through the years, his mental suffering the most. He craved any attention he could get, that he actually asked for. Found comfort in both women’s and men’s body’s when he could sneak away for the day and drown himself in enough alcohol to fully enjoy his exploits without the demented whisper of his father’s shadow in his ear.

  
The fact that no one found his rebellion strange never failed to infuriate him. His father fully ignored it, reasoning with his mother behind closed doors that this is what men do, they act out until they can find their own footing. It drove him to higher and higher heights, fighting back against his brother where he could, and only getting harsher and harsher treatment as he fought against everything that threatened to drown him in its’ grasp.

  
Eventually not even the people he called friends worried enough to call out his behaviour, as he drove to higher and scarier heights to hopefully capture someone’s attention and save himself from this death spiral he was trapped in, between himself and whatever deity he had pissed off enough to trap him like this, with no way out. Eventually, no one even bothered to look his way, Felix telling him to stop acting out and start training more, and that he was a disappointment to everything his house stood for. Dimitri had not been the same since his parent’s murder, and barely even looked his way anymore, simply shaking his head and moving onto more important matters than the self-destruction of his friend.

  
It wasn’t until the night trapped in the well, did Sylvain really understand the futility of his existence. To almost everyone he knew, he was not a person, not a human being in the basest sense of the feeling and word. He was a tool to further his parents’ goal, to gain them more land, more influence, to marry off and forget about. His parents would not die soon enough, they had only been young when he was born, and even younger still when his brother was. His friends had been driven away by his actions, not seeing the cry for help that they were screaming for so long. A part of him he so desperately tried to push away wondered if they even cared about the person he was, or if they had stuck around to benefit of what he would eventually inherit, and how useful he would be in the future.

  
There was no freedom from this life, aside from the death he so craved, an escape that had not been granted to him yet. An escape that would render his house heirless, unless they took Miklan back, and made him an heir. An escape that would leave his friends without him, but maybe it would be good for them, to not be burdened by his existence for any longer than they already had been.

  
Maybe the goddess, if she lived, revelled in his suffering, watching from wherever she lives as the skin was flayed from his bones again and again, as he was punished for deeds that were not his own. Maybe she drew sadistic pleasure as his body as desecrated by those who only sought to bring themselves pleasure or further their own agenda. Did the goddess care for those she presided over? Was she too complicit in this warfare that had been threaded through his bones and limbs, making him a puppet for the desires of those around him? Was she to blame, had she not woven the threads of existence itself in a delicate tapestry? Could she simply not just cut his thread? To end his life before his suffering has chance to grow root and rot his very core?

  
Maybe the well had been a gift from her, pity on the boy who could not face his own aggressors and jailors. An end to the suffering he had lived through, through the mask that had been sewn onto his face so perfectly and meticulously that he could no longer remember where the mask started, and his real face began. The cold crept closer and closer, intertwining with the snake that lived in his bones, and the spiders that made his pores their homes.

  
Oh, how he longed for the stories he had heard, of soft butterfly wings, caressing his face, of the soft and delicate touch of a bird preening his hair, of the soft snort of a well-meaning horse, that loved its rider more than anything else in the world. These had only ever been stories in his unfortunate life, but maybe in the next, he would finally get to live out these sought-after sensations, maybe he would finally get to live peacefully, with a family who valued him as a person, and not a tool to be used.

  
In the quiet peace of the well, tears finally fell. Death herself was finally coming for him, Sylvain knew this fact, as the feelings in his limbs began to fade, and it became harder and harder to think. Thoughts becoming infinitely more difficult to grasp and form as the cold climbed into his heart, seizing it with a fury he had never felt before.

  
In the final moments, before his eyes slipped closed, he could’ve sworn that he felt a gentle, loving touch brush over his face, accompanied by a soft soften voice telling him that his rest was well earned. In this final moment, he had missed the fevered scream of his name as it echoed down the shaft of the well from a pair of voices he had already grown to miss so dearly.

**Author's Note:**

> check me out on twitter @ TBA!!!


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